A beautifully written and translated work that creates rare, subtle portraits of Germans.
A stunning portrait of a strenuously anti-Nazi family in Berlin who managed to hang on to their moral convictions during the brutalizing Hitler years.
A conservative historian and journalist who wrote a biography of Hitler, among other works (Inside Hitler’s Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich, 2004, etc.), Fest first published this moving memoir of his coming-of-age during the Third Reich to enormous acclaim in Germany in 2006, also the year of his death at age 79. One of five children born to a politically committed teacher, Johannes Fest, who was alarmed by the ascent of the Nazi Party at the expense of the Weimar Republic, the author and his siblings grew up in a middle-class Berlin suburb and were duly inculcated with their father’s staunch prophetic teachings about the perils of surrendering to Nazi lawlessness. Johannes took his children to see the burned-out Reichstag, lost his civil service job in 1933 due to his perceived inability to support the “national state,” and was frequently shunned by neighbors, prompting his fearful wife to plea for compromise with the Nazi state so that their life would be easier. But Johannes maintained his moral convictions, and the author and his older brother were invited to a “second supper” with his parents after the smaller ones had gone to bed in order to discuss the events of the day in secrecy. Fest’s portrait of his father is strikingly sympathetic, especially against the backdrop of an increasingly acquiescent German populace for whom “upholding the law was more important…than justice.” After boarding school and recruitment into the compulsory Hitler Youth, then the Luftwaffe, Fest experienced a horrifying end to the war, yet his memoir focuses more on his literary and musical development.
A beautifully written and translated work that creates rare, subtle portraits of Germans.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59051-610-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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